PHOTOS

VIDEOS

1955

FACULTY

Wig Awards Established

The Wig Distinguished Professorship Awards were endowed in
1955 by R.J. Wig, President of the Board of Trustees from 1948 to 1961. Since
then, the awards for excellence in teaching have become the highest honor bestowed
on Pomona faculty, recognizing exceptional teaching, concern for students, and service
to the College and the community. The recipients of the Wig Award are elected
each year by the junior and senior classes and then confirmed by a committee of
trustees, faculty and students.

CONSORTIUM

Harvey Mudd College Founded

As the advent of computing and the dawn of the space race
made technological education a growing national priority, Harvey Mudd College
was founded as the fourth undergraduate institution of The Claremont Colleges.
Chartered in 1955, HMC was founded to be a liberal arts college with a strong
emphasis upon science and engineering. The institution was named for former
Pomona College trustee Harvey Seeley Mudd, who served as Chair of the Board of
Fellows of the Claremont Graduate University for a quarter of a century. While
serving in that position, Mudd helped to plan for the new institution that was
chartered just a few months after his death in 1955, with the backing of his
family and friends. HMC opened its doors to students two years later, in 1957.

ELSEWHERE

The Pentagon announced a plan to develop intercontinental
ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons.

American cytogeneticist Joe Hin Tjio discovered the
correct number of human chromosomes, forty-six.

General Motors Corporation became the first American
corporation to make a profit of more than one billion dollars in one year.